Predicting the Future of Fundraising: Where Will You Be?

Gayle Roberts from Fundraising for Nonprofits is calling for posts and comments on the topic of "Predicting the Future of Fundraising." What will the fundraising realm look like in ten years? Now that's a question!

Ten years doesn't sound like much, but if you think back to what you were doing a decade ago, it actually is quite a long time. I had just graduated college. I wasn't married yet and didn't have any kids. I was just starting out in my career and wasn't even in the annual giving profession quite yet. I had some experience in the internet, but only mostly email. I had never purchased anything online and still paid all my bills by check. I didn't even own a computer. That came about two years later. I didn't have a debit card and I got cash out when needed at the bank or wrote a check for over the amount due at the grocery store, if needed. I didn't know what an e-card was and if I wanted to know if a friend was friends with someone else I knew, I had no Facebook or LinkedIn to reference, so I just asked. And what's even most amazing is that email generally wasn't used for work, but mostly for personal messaging.

Now flash forward another ten years and I honestly can't even begin to think what our lives will be like. We live in the age of the iPod and You Tube and online communities and we are all still behind technology in terms of our fundraising efforts. We are still primarily sending direct mail and making phone calls, while our young alumni aren't reading their snail mail and aren't picking up their phones unless they know who is calling. We are lucky if they read our emails these days.

I envision that we'll be using technology beyond our wildest dreams to reach our audience. I also think that circles of giving may be the wave of the future - especially for those who make small gifts. The idea to pool money to create a bigger pot will give those young donors more of a voice. I believe recurring monthly giving will become the most popular way to give and probably one of our biggest concerns is people taking the time to upgrade that monthly habit.

It's exciting to think of what's ahead, but also a little scary. Probably just when we get caught up with the latest craze, there will be some new trend to learn about. I guess that is what keeps us in this profession. The possibilities are endless as long as our audience is becoming more tech savvy. I think it may be easier for us in some ways to keep them connected to their alma maters with online communities, yet more difficult to bring a more personal experience to them. I'm sure that predictive modeling and data mining will be a necessity in order to segment the way we need to for efficiencies and greatest success.

I wonder if I'll still be in this profession in another ten years. Ten years ago I would have never thought I'd be here now, so who knows? It's a great question! Where will you be?